Apr 13, 2010

Autodesk's lawyers may have prevailed against those of Open Design Alliance, but it looks like they may be failing against ordinary bureaucracy.

Last month, it seems that the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Tradmark Examination Policy at the United States Patent and Trademark Office decided (see 241-page letter) that even though the Autodesk DWG trademark application hasn't
gotten to the publication stage (where letters from protesters, like the ODA, are usually accepted), a letter written by the ODA in 2008 is not to be tossed:

It has been determined that the evidence submitted by the protester [ODA] is relevant and supports a reasonable ground for refusal...

The letter includes many attachments, including statements from CAD vendors who predate Autodesk's founding in 1981, and so were using DWG before Autodesk. In particular, Autodesk inherited the DWG extension from Mike Riddle, the man who wrote the Interact CAD system in the late 1970s, which he licensed to Autodesk, who then resold it under the name of "AutoCAD." Mr Riddle continued to use DWG for the file extension of his subsequent software, FastCAD.

Other attachments are copies of magazine articles, Web sites, and numerous standards bodies who list DWG as a file extension, something Autodesk never ever protested against -- until just recently.

Autodesk lost in Europe, and now looks set to lose in USA. Despite the legal losses, Autodesk continues to threaten in pseudo-legal language that DWG cannot be used without its permission:

...avoiding customer confusion by non-Autodesk products' use of DWG as a trademark
without prior permission from Autodesk.

and

...certain uses of DWG as a trademark are not permissible...

Except for the problem that DWG isn't a registered trademark and so doesn't belong to Autodesk. The company is unable to enforce its claim in the USA and European Union; it may be different in other countries.

Since there were/are CAD programs -- developed independently of Autodesk -- that also use DWG as their file extension, Autodesk cannot claim that it needs to baby its users by protecting them against "customer confusion."

The nanny-ist claim insults the intelligence of its own customers, as well as of users of the other CAD programs.

Comments

I was going to write something similar, and you saved me the effort. Autodesk does not, never did, and never will own exclusive rights to use the term DWG. Autodesk's legal team should stop pretending, it's not a good look.

Its called greed. Major share of the market still isn't good enough for them.

Look, lots of designers would still prefer Autodesk products for certain tasks - even when they only use about half of its functionality.

Fact is, millions gets invested every year into AutoCAD functionality that isn't required - but makes at least some users believe could be and that they are still getting something for their maintenance. Where does Autodesk actually get the money for this bloatware-style development? From high prices and constantly trolling the market with legal scare tactics.

I hope Autodesk realizes how this is backfiring on them. Nobody really _wants_ to work with guys like this.

AutoCAD 2011 displays the following when you open a non-Autodesk created DWG:

"Non Autodesk DWG. This DWG file was saved by a software application that was
not developed or licensed by Autodesk. Autodesk cannot guarantee the
application compatibility or integrity of this file."

This is false and misleading trade practices, and if you ask me, gives competitors grounds for legal action against Autodesk.

What other purpose can there be to restate the terms and conditions of the ELUA (which stipulates that there is "NO WARRANTEE" of an kind, on ANY DWG file, regardless of what software produced it), than to mislead the customer into believing that DWG files produced by non-Autodesk software are somehow inferior or defective?